Citrus Commission Researchers Focus on OJ Quality, Flavor

Wednesday

Feb 27, 2013 at 3:48 AM

The Scientific Research Department at the Florida Department of Citrus has rebranded itself to reflect a new mission focusing on monitoring orange juice quality and flavor that might be affected by citrus greening.

By KEVIN BOUFFARDTHE LEDGER

BARTOW | The Scientific Research Department at the Florida Department of Citrus has rebranded itself to reflect a new mission focusing on monitoring orange juice quality and flavor that might be affected by citrus greening.The department's name is now the Center of Citrus Nutrition and Quality Research, Dan King, its director, told the Florida Citrus Commission. The commission is the Citrus Department's governing body."We're changing our focus to bring the flavor aspect more into our mission than in the past," King said Tuesday. To help with flavor analysis, the commission approved spending $164,145 over the next two years to purchase a new machine capable of doing "gas chromatography with mass spectrometry analysis." The machine can identify various chemicals in orange juice linked to its "flavor profile," he said.Scientific research at the Citrus Department goes back to shortly after the Legislature created the state agency in 1935. One of its early researchers was the late Edwin Moore, who with two colleagues is credited with creating the process during the 1940s, still used today, to make a quality frozen concentrated OJ.The Lake Alfred-based research department has always monitored orange juice quality, testing for elements including sugar and acid ratios, nutrient content and adulteration, King said. The testing ensures juice makers are providing the product as advertised on the label.The department maintains a large database from decades of OJ testing that provides a road map on orange juice composition, he said.While many of those elements relate to flavor, the department has not been tracking all the chemicals and compounds research has identified in OJ's flavor profile, King said. The new machine will enable it to do so and enhance the OJ database.Florida juice processors buy 95 percent of the state's annual orange crop, by far the state's largest citrus crop.Tracking flavor has become ­especially important now that Florida growers are battling citrus greening, a bacterial disease that damages fruit and eventually kills the tree, King said. Left untreated, a greening-infected tree produces oranges with undrinkably bitter juice.Growers have been able to counteract greening's effects through an "enhanced nutrition" program that replaces many of the minor nutrients the disease robs from a citrus tree.So far there's been no evidence of flavor problems from infected orange trees sustained by enhanced nutrition, King said, but there's a need to continually monitor the OJ from them."We don't know what we're going to do, if we can do anything, but we've got to take a look," he said.The new mission is a response to a July report from the Citrus Research and Development Foundation Inc. identifying gaps in its research effort. The foundation is leading that effort and has spent more than $66 million on research since 2009.The report recommends more research on the disease's effects on quality of fruit, juice and byproducts. The foundation financed two research projects looking at the question several years ago, Chief Operating Officer Harold Browning said, and is encouraging scientists submit more proposals.Browning agreed growers are concerned about the possible effects from various methods to fight greening on OJ and fruit quality.

[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980. Read more on Florida citrus on his Facebook page, Florida Citrus Witness, http://bit.ly/baxWuU. ]